I used the emitter called "Drips 1" from the "Color From Layer" library that comes with pIllusion 3.0. I modified it to not get the color from the layer (in the emitter properties, under the particle Tab's section called "Color."

Then I just made it so all of the particles were white (Got rid of any extra colors) and lowered the Number of Particles being emitted.

Question:
The rain on the floor is rendered in 3D using bump mapping and the text is placed using AE in AE's 3D view using the camera data from Maya and then the rings rendered seperatly are used as a displacment on the text layer in AE?

In Maya, I Deleted everything except Plane 1, the lights, and the animated camera. I set the lights to 0 intesity (don't delete them - make their intensity 0 - otherwise, maya uses it's own fake lighting system which effects the layer making some parts too bright). Replaced the Phong shader with a lambert shader, with everything set to black, except the Incandescence channel (in 3DS max this would be called "Self Illumination").

In the Incandescence channel I put the same black and white rings movie that I used on the bump map. You can't see it in the Orthographic view, but if you do a render you will see the rings, and that they are not effected by the fact that there is no light in the scene.

I then rendered out a movie of the same length as the 3D environment render.

In After Effects

Imported the Maya camera data into AE

Imported both renders into AE. Dropped them both in the comp - kept them as 2D layers (remember, the 3D has already been rendered - they are only flat images now).

Made the B&W rings invisible - turned off their eyeball.

placed/rotated the text in 3D so that they appeared flat on the floor. BTW - You can set up null objects in Maya to mark where you want your text layer (or any other AE 3D layer) to be.

Added the displacement map effect to the text, and used the invisible B&W render as the source of displacement. Played with the settings until I got something I liked.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]"placed/rotated the text in 3D so that they appeared flat on the floor. BTW - You can set up null objects in Maya to mark where you want your text layer (or any other AE 3D layer) to be. "

This is the part I was hoping for more info on.
You import the Maya camera to the AE camera and then load the nulls from the Maya scene?

Sorry if this seems straight forward but I have not used AE since 4.0 and use DFX+ 4 now.
As you know, the present DFX is not a 3D compositor (will be in 5.0).
So was wondering how AE allows you to load the nulls position and how you use them to allign the text.

Jose, this is a bit too deep for posting in the forum. I teach a 2 hour class on this process.

I would strongly suggest you read the help files from AE on importing Maya projects into AE.

Also, Trish Meyer does a great job of explaining this in Creating motion graphics with After Effects volume 2.

This only works with After Effects 5.5 or greater and it must be the production bundle (Now called "Professional Version").
Things that are crucial:

1) Save as Maya Ascii (MA) not Maya Binray (MB)

2) Bake all Camera and Null (locator) Keyframes

3) Name All locators (used as nulls in AE) like this: name_NULL or name_null. All caps for "null" or all lowercase. Not both.

4) Do not use or copy an Orthographic Camera. Create a new camera. It won't work otherwise.

You might try asking about this in the Maya and AE forums. Maybe there's even a tutorial available here at the cow or elswhere online that covers this subject.

It's not that's it's difficult, but it requires a good knowledge of Maya and AE to make it work well. If you do everything right, when you choose to import the MA file into AE (Same as you import another file), AE will set everything up for you.

Once the comp is set up, drop your rendered 3D footage in there - remember keepo them as non-3D layers. The image is flat - it is a movie of a 3D scene - not actually 3D.

You will need to copy the position, scale, and any rotation for your null objects, and paste it into your 3d AE Layers - do not "replace" the nulls - this will just make your layer invisible.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]"You will need to copy the position, scale, and any rotation for your null objects, and paste it into your 3d AE Layers - do not "replace" the nulls - this will just make your layer invisible.

Hope this gets you moving in the right direction. "

I see you copy and paste the 3D data into the AE 3D layer.
Yes this is what I was looking for.

Wanted to know how you did it in AE so that when the new version of DF comes out, I can compare.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]"You need to select and copy the keyframes from the nulls in AE and paste them on other layers in AE. You don't copy the data from maya and paste into AE.
What is DF?"

Yes you where clear.
Crystal :)

Digital Fusion.
Node based compositor with a virtual camera finally coming in version 5.
I think only AE is left as a non-node based compositor.
Since I switched from AE to DF, I have never looked back except when I wished it was possible to composite with a virtual camera.